News: Mindtree ropes in Cognizant’s former executive as CEO

Mindtree ropes in Cognizant’s former executive as CEO

The newly appointed CEO will replace Rostow Ravanan who had quit this month after L&T took over Mindtree.

Starting tomorrow, from 1st August 2019, Debashis Chatterjee will lead the business for Mindtree as its Chief Executive Officer. The news comes weeks after Mindtree’s former top executives - Chief Executive Officer Rostow Ravanan, Chairman Krishnakumar Natarajan and Vice Chairman Parthasarathy NS quit when L&T took over the mid-tier IT company.

L&T's takeover of Mindtree is said to be India's first-ever hostile takeover in the IT space. The infrastructure giant had bought 20.32 percent shares in Mindtree from Coffee Day Enterprises Founder, late VG Siddhartha for over Rs 3,000 crore in March. Later, it made more share purchases from the open market before making an open offer for an additional 31 percent stake. As per the latest update, L&T has acquired control of the company and has been categorised as a promoter with 60.06 percent stake in the company.

As Mindtree undergoes these changes, the staff of the company needs a strong leadership. Acquisitions often impact the workforce of the acquired organizations the hardest. There are often structural changes, employees are often laid off, and roles are changed. In case of Mindtree what will happen to the talent and how the take over will impact the staff still remains unknown. Given the experience, Chatterjee comes with, he would have to take on the driving seat and try to take people centric decisions that also impact the business positively.

In his latest role at Cognizant, Chatterjee was leading global deliveries for the firm as Executive Vice President and President, Global Delivery. But there are many other diverse roles he has taken up in Cognizant before. He had joined the firm in 1996 and has held several key management positions.

Now he has to help Mindtree and its entire team navigate through the challenges of latest acquisition, using his years of experience and knowledge. As this job is easier said than done, how Chatterjee directs Mindtree out of this phase and help it transition towards more growth is to look forward to.

Here's a story that touches upon people intergration and how it can be done in alignment with the rest of the business efforts: Navigating the integration